Amazon.com, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase will form a healthcare company aimed at cutting costs for their U.S. employees, they said on Tuesday, sending shares in the broad healthcare sector sharply lower. The company will not aim to make a profit and initially focus on technology to provide what they called "simplified, high-quality and transparent healthcare" for their more than 500,000 U.S. employees. "The ballooning costs of healthcare act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy," said Berkshire Hathaway Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett. "Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable."

The Santa Fe Railroad Hospital was unique because it was one of very few hospitals built by Texas railroads specifically for their employee's benefit. Railroad work was dangerous and injuries frequent. Medical care for railroad workers, scattered across the state, was scarce and rudimentary. The Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway decided it would be better for their employees and the railroad's operations if injured workers could be brought to a then state-of-the-art hospital for treatment of their injuries.

The Santa Fe Hospital opened in June 1891 on South Twenty-Fifth Street in Temple. The hospital was operated by the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Hospital Association, formed by Galveston businessmen who owned the Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway. The Santa Fe was among the first railroads to adopt a system-wide prepaid hospitalization and pension plan. Before 1891 railway workers were treated at St. Mary's Hospital in Galveston, but rail officials established a hospital in Temple because of its central location in the railway system.